Letters for Moony
by Xenoglossy
Summary: Sometimes the hand remembers better than the mouth what the heart speaks, poured out in ink and paper and tears and blood.


**PRE FIC RANTINGS AND A SPRINKLE OF DISCLAIMER:** I know, I know. Over used idea and full of uber-cliches, but what the hell. This muse has been bothering me for a long time. Like, you don't even know.

I love Remus. Yey Remus! But I love Sirius lots too. I don't know why I didn't think of this earlier. Sort of slashy, but not really.

Franchise belongs to JK Rowling and such.

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Letters for Moony

Cephied Variable

"I wrote."

"I know."

"Four-thousand, three hundred and eighty letters. One for every day I was there."

"I know."

"They collected them at the end of the week and I never saw them again. But I don't suppose you ever got them..."

"Of course not."

"Then how..."

"It just seems like the sort of thing you'd do." Remus tapped the battered table surface nervously and sighed. There was a sudden lull in the conversation and Sirius felt as if he should say something. Remus's head was tipped towards the open window and his chin rested in the hollow of his worn, ink-stained palm. His hair was almost more gray than sandy brown now and Sirius found it more difficult with each passing day to grasp that fleeting mental picture of a youthful Remus, flickering into a weary but genuine grin. He knew that this was because Remus was old and he wasn't, no matter how his bones ached or his stubble itched or his nights ended in wide-eyed, cold-sweated screams.

Sirius wanted very badly to express this somehow and even made to, but somewhere between the sentence formation in his brain and the action of opening one's mouth, the words froze in his throat and shattered. He choked on them and suddenly forgot that he had been about to speak at all. Instead he shivered at the taste in his mouth because the tea in Remus's house was bitter and the silence that they shared was not companionable, but tense and dreadfully unfinished.

This was not right. Sirius felt his right hand twitch as his thumb gently ran over his reddened writer's callous. His fingers still remembered the words although his brain and tounge seemed incapable of recollection. His fingers remembered the motion of writing an address over and over again in cheap, foul smelling ink and in a hundred different ways. _Dear Rem, Dear Remus, Dear Mr. Lupin, Dear Mr. Remus Lupin,_ but most often and almost always he started it with just the one word- the silly and oft-giggled over, butterbeer induced nickname. _Moony, Moony, Moony, Moony,_ until it was a natural reflex for his quill to form those five, precious letters.

The ache in his wrist still echoed of desperate pleas, still sore from the scrawl of every feverish word that Sirius had written during those twelve long years. _Rem, I'm innocent. You have to believe me that I'm innocent. Remus, it was really Peter, that little wormtailed bastard. Didn't you know that I switched? Didn't you hear? James and Lily knew that- I swear they did! They know I'm innocent, but it's important that you do as well. Mr. Lupin, I thought that you might perhaps be interested. I thought that you might listen but when I think about it, maybe I did kill them. I should have known- I just should have know. Mr. Remus Lupin, were you at my trial? Did your eyes follow the accused all they way out of the court room burning with hatred as his own burned with regret? Do you hate the accused, Mr. Remus Lupin? because you really, really should. Moony, do you know that every night I dream of what I saw in the rubble of James house? How I pried Harry from the arms of his dead, and still breathing, mother's body? How James's eyes were white and filmy and not that brilliant midnight blue that we're all so used to. Moony, do you know how much that hurts? Everyday as I wake and breathe, when I'm not writing these letters, I plan it out because I know he's still alive. I don't think I'll kill him the magical way, what do you think Moony? I think he deserves to feel the cold hands of death around his neck. Feel sharp, abused fingers dig into the skin of his neck tighter and tighter until he can't breathe and he chokes and his face turns all the wrong colors and... but of course you'd disagree, Moony, because you were always so pure and good in everything you did. Have you ever met Harry, Moony? because I'm told by the newspapaers that he's noweheres to be seen. I bet he looks like James but from what I remember of that frantic, blood-stained night ae eyes that were green, green, green just like Lily's. The face of a dead man and the eyes of a dead woman and the mark of the Dark Lord on his forehead. Harry must be like death itself- a dark and miserable little boy. Don't you wish better for him, Moony? I would, but I'm here and there's nothing better here except for the faint traces of you that still lingers in my memory. So wish and hope for him in my place, Remus, and I'll be there eventually to fill in the gaps or maybe just to remind everyone of the past we're all trying so desperately to escape. I bet you hate me, Remus. Too bad I always forgot to mention that I was in love with you. Too bad that I never realized it until the ghosts of your smile, laughter and tears began to dance and weave in and out between my dreams and my fantasies and the sickness of my warped reality until I called out to you because I had dreamt that you brought me flowers and sometimes my dreams are real. You walked right up to the cell, all tight lipped with sorrow written on your face like a story and pressed yourself up against the bars, watching me with mixed contempt and pity. The flowers were wilted because you never could find work and your robes were patchy. You passed the flowers to me without saying a word and then you left and I felt just as lonely and empty as before. I'm writing you now, Remus, my dear, dear Moony, to ask you whether you were really here or not because I'm having such a difficult time deciding what to think. My delusions are so tangible nowadays, but they still don't account for the blackened skeletons of long-dead daisies preserved beneath my ratty pillow. After all this time, they still smell of you..._

Sirius gasped as it came back to him like a flood of spilt ink, mis-dotted i's and punctuation both quiet and loud. His hand dropped to his pocket where he still carried one petrified stem and crushed it in his fist, scattering the black fragments on the table in front of him. Remus raised his eyebrows in surprise but only stared and said nothing.

"I think they burnt all the letters." Sirius whispered, flattening his writing hand against the table and willing it to forget, "I'm glad you never read them."

;fin


End file.
